This last week restarts from the greebrowneries of Galicia and heads to Madrid in the centre of the country, through Castile-and-Leon and the Sierra near Madrid, which requires several long transfers as the stages themselves do not progress much in the right direction. The Time Trial will be held on Thrusday in Valladolid.
Standings after stage 15
General
- J. Vingegaard 🇩🇰 Visma
- J. Almeida 🇵🇹 UAE – 48″
- T. Pidcock 🇬🇧 Q36.5 – 2′38″
- J. Hindley 🇦🇺 Bora – 3′10″
- F. Gall 🇨🇭 Décathlon – 3′30″
- G. Pellizzari 🇮🇹 Bora – 4′21″
- M. Ricitello 🇺🇸 Visma – 4′53″
- S. Kuss 🇺🇸 Visma – 5′46″
- J. Lecerf 🇧🇪 Soudal-QS – 5′49″
- T. Træen 🇳🇴 Bahrain – 6′33″
Lecerf enters top-10 thanks to the large breakaway on stage #15, which was given some 13 free minutes by the peloton. Ciccone drops despite being in the same breakaway, as he had lost a lot on the mountain stages.
Points
- M. Pedersen 🇩🇰 Lidl-trek – 237 pts (+117)
- J. Vingegaard 🇩🇰 Visma – 139 pts (+39)
- G. Ciccone 🇮🇹 Lidl-Trek – 88 pts (+27)
- E. Vernon 🇬🇧 IPT – 111 pts (=0)
- J. Philipsen 🇧🇪 Alpecin – 105 pts (=0)
The composition of top-5 hasn’t changed, but its structure has. After two relatively sluggish stages blocks in that respect, Pedersen finally created a significant gap by going into breakaways (and those weren’t easy ones!) and grabbing many Intermediate Sprints, as well as winning stage #15. Vernon, who was previously going for I.S., didn’t score a single point; neither did Philipsen (who wasn’t).
Mountain
- J. Vine 🇦🇺 UAE – 61 pts (+27)
- J. Vingegaard 🇩🇰 Visma – 39 pts (+24)
- L. Vervaeke 🇧🇪 Soudal-QS – 32 pts (+9)
- J. Almeida 🇵🇹 UAE – 29 pts (+25)
- J. Ayuso 🇪🇸 UAE – 26 pts (+6)
- M. Soler 🇪🇸 UAE – 26 pts (+26)
Quinn and Nicolau left top-5. Vine kept on accumulating points in breakaways, to keep the two GC guys at bay. Soler scored all his points during this block.
Teams (rounded)
- UAE 🇳🇱
- Visma – 35′
- Bora – 1h05′
- Décathlon – 1h07′
- Caja Rural – 1h24′
Soudal-QS, Astana and Bahrain follow closely. First and second places seem to be anchored now. The performance of the Pro Team Caja Rural is noteworthy. The bottom of the classification is occupied by a quatuor of French and Belgian teams, 5 hours and more behind, which do worse than the weak Burgos team reduced to 4 men (among said teams, only Alpecin is voluntarily only playing sprints).
So in fact they had removed part of the South loop and part of the West loop, so the wall had disappeared and it was pure flat.
No big differences were made. Vingegaard is probably grateful for the shortening because he looks still ill. I suppose he could answer like Küng who was asked if he wouldn’t have preferred the full length: “given my condition, it was better like this! 😀”.
Gall was passed by Riccitello but that’s just a matter of a handful of seconds.
Not a bad ITT by a Vingegaard in rough shape, but also a super strong Almeida performance. Had it been the full length I am sure it would be closer. Tomorrow will be a breakaway or sprint, so all will be decided on stage 20. Let’s hope everyone is healthy for a good final battle.
So I was listening to Lang Distance, Mads Petersen’s podcast with an old mate, and apparently Ciccone is looking to sell his Ferrari - and Mads Pedersen had offered him 150.000 euros for it, but it’s worth something like 240K. So they made a bet, that if Mads Pedersen won the TT Cicco would accept the lower bid. Bet he was sweating bullets from the 2nd timing point to the finish :D
Rumours are there’s a video of him watching Mads riding and looking more and more pale, but I haven’t seen it. Maybe it’s just an internal video :D